"For I know the plans that I have for
you," declares the LORD, "plans for welfare and not for
calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon
Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will
seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your
heart."
Jeremiah 29:11-13 (NAS)

Our First Year in
College: The Lord's mercy to us!

Lori and I were the same age and both began college in the
same semester. I chose to attend North Texas State University, in
Denton, Texas, because of their strong music program, honors
program, and a small work/scholarship. Lori chose Texas Woman's
University, also located in Denton, Texas. She was planning to
study Occupational Therapy and found that it was cheaper to
attend TWU in Texas than the school in her own state offering
this degree program. So there we were, on opposite sides of town
in different universities.

I came to college with lots of hopes, dreams and fears. I had
grand ambitions, but was overly idealistic and naïve in many
areas. Outwardly, I believed I could do anything, inwardly I saw
my inadequacy and felt a sense of desperation. I realized God was
my only true hope. I had sought after God from my early youth and
read much of the Bible, but without a lot of understanding.
Though I believed I had a personal relationship with God, and
knew I was dependent on His mercy and forgiveness, I did not have
a good understanding of salvation and may not have truly been a
believer. Though I seemed to be a "good kid", I wasn't
really. And I had bought into all sorts of philosophies and lies
prevalent in that day.

But God showed His lovingkindess and mercy in how He reached
out to me in the college dormitory. He placed a young and growing
Christian in the room adjoining mine and just one room down
across the hall, a more mature believer who would be both my
friend and mentor. Through these I became involved with other
Christians, active with Campus Crusade for Christ and involved in
a local Methodist church (a rather unusual one - popular even
with many Baptists). Now I truly understood what I had been
reading for years and confirmed my salvation through faith alone
in the saving work of Christ!

I began to study the Bible in the early morning and the
evening, to complete Campus Crusade discipleship materials, to
read numerous Christian books, to memorize scripture and spend
whatever spare time I had in the fellowship and encouragement of
believers. Thus began a period of rapid Christian growth, which
resulted in my becoming something of a leader within Campus
Crusade.

Lori had become a Christian in her early teens from teaching
at church and influences from her grandmother. But she had not
had solid teaching beyond that. She was far away from home for
the first time, with no friends or family near, and with
independence without accountability. Lori was naïve and left
totally unprotected in a very dangerous environment. But by the
grace of God, she became involved in a church in which she began
to receive effective teaching to encourage spiritual growth. And
she also found a Christian friend there who lived nearby in the
same dorm as herself - providing a place to go to get away from
her Satan worshipping roomates.

COMMENTARY: College

On Being Rescued,

Sending your children away to college can
be a very dangerous thing! Especially if they are not
very well grounded in the faith, mature and wise about
the depravity and philosophies they may encounter there.
Daughters are particularly vulnerable being out from
under their father's protection and subject to being
preyed upon by men - even ones claiming to be Christian!

... the men laid hold
upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife,..., the
LORD being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth,
and set him without the city. Genesis 19:16 (KJV)

As
Lot was rescued by the mercy of the Lord, even so were
we!

Our Second Year in
College: Courtship & Engagement.

I began my second year in college with a new perspective on
life, a new life purpose. I was excited at how the Lord was
changing me! But I was also very desirous of a wife. I had been
something of a loner all of my life and had longed for a wife to
be my best friend/ soul mate/ life partner since about 13 years
of age. But I had been shy around girls and had minimal dating
experience.

My best friend and mentor had just become married, mid-way
through school. I had just had my life turned around and my ideas
about many things transformed. I had now studied about Christian
dating and marriage and observed some good real life examples.
Now that the Lord had so changed the direction of my life, I felt
that this might be the time when He would bring my future wife to
me. But don't misunderstand - this wasn't a plan on my part to go
looking for the right girl. Rather it was an impression, which I
believed to be of the Holy Spirit, that He was going to bring her
to me. My plan was to be busy about what He had for me to be
doing, treating all Christian young ladies as sisters, but being
open if He led towards a particular one. And by now, my ideas
about what was desirable and important in a wife had changed a
lot!

At the beginning of the fall semester I began to take more of
a leadership role in the college group at church. I began to sing
in the church choir and to get to know some of the adults in the
church. Among the many girls there (the church was near TWU) was
Lori. I had neither met nor noticed her the previous year at
church, nor had she paid much attention to me. While planning a
ministry opportunity with the college group, Lori came forward
with ideas for singing and testifying at a nursing home in town.
So my first real acquaintance with Lori was from planning this.
She had worked at the nursing home and thus knew the people and
particulars needed and so was a key contributor to the planning.

At first I saw Lori as a valued co-laborer, a sister with a
heart to serve God and a heart of mercy towards old people. But
very quickly I began to see more. We seemed to have a lot of the
same vision and values concerning family (both extended and what
we desired for future family). And I was quickly becoming fond of
her as she also was of me. Over what seemed like many months (but
truly was only 6 to 8 weeks), we saw a great deal of each other:
at church, after church at the home of a church family that
hosted the college group, at choir practice, at Campus Crusade
meetings and riding to and fro in my car (since Lori had no
vehicle). Then there was a Campus Crusade party and a Crusade
weekend retreat, and there were phone calls, talking in the park
or in a "visitation room" at her dorm, etc. We spent a
lot of hours together in a short period of time and became very
fond of each other. I had been sufficiently shy and unsure of
myself in this realm, that at the slightest hint from Lori, I
would have backed away from the relationship. But Lori responded
favorably at every step along the way.

I began to see strong hints that Lori loved me. I felt the
same but had purposely avoided saying so. I had read in a
Christian book that a young man should not say "I love
you" unless he was ready to follow with the question,
"Will you marry me?" Was I sure Lori was God's choice
for me? Before the Thanksgiving break, Lori suggested we should
pray about our relationship, meaning whether we should "slow
down". For me the issue was whether I was certain she was
God's choice for me to marry and I should propose. I returned,
after much prayer, prepared to ask her to marry me. Though a
little surprised, she did not hesitate to respond affirmatively
and thus we were engaged. Within but a week or two after, I
received a call from Lori's older sister (already married), who
had heard about our engagement. She was requesting that I be with
Lori when she told her that their mother had died of a stroke and
that I might go with them to Peoria. I did, and that was how I
met my future in-laws!

At Christmas time, Lori returned home to Peoria for the spring
semester, helping her dad and younger brothers after the death of
her mother. At the end of May, she returned to Denton and we were
married there on June 1st. Shortly after we married, we attended
Bill Gothard's Seminar on Basic Youth Conflicts. Wow, our eyes
were opened to a lot of foolish things we had done and a lot of
others things that needed attention in our lives and marriage!

COMMENTARY: Courtship

In retrospect, we see that there were many aspects of
our courtship that were not right or were just plain
foolish. We did not involve our parents in our marriage
decision. We foolishly thought we didn't need their
advice or approval concerning either whom to marry or the
timing of marriage. Though we were perhaps more
responsible and mature than many of our age, we were not
nearly as mature and prepared for marriage as we thought!
And though we had grown a lot and had recently had the
benefit of good instruction concerning Christian
marriage, we were still young in the Lord and naive about
a great many things. We did not anticipate the extent to
which our background differences would produce
opportunities for conflict. Nor did we realize the extent
of our own immaturity and selfishness. We have taught a
significantly different approach to our children!

Our First Year of
Marriage: Hardships but learning to trust God.

Our first year as husband and wife was both wonderful and
awful! Being married was a wonderful blessing from God and what a
precious gift He had given me in Lori! But it wasn't all the
smooth sailing / no problems I naively expected. We had a lot of
conflict that first year as all our differences came to the
forefront. Things like being raised in very different parts of
the country, family economic and type of job differences, only
child vs. second of five, besides the differences in our
temperaments and family customs, all contributed to differences
of viewpoint. I had expected my spiritual walk after marriage to
be better than ever, but I found myself really struggling and not
understanding why God was allowing us to have these difficulties.
In truth, it was the beginning of a lot of real spiritual growth
and learning of wisdom, but it took time and we had to be humbled
a lot first.

Up to the point of our marriage, I had never had a job. We had
planned for Lori to work and support me through the rest of my
schooling, even as my mother did for my dad. Fortunately, I had
some money saved up or we would have been broke from the start.
And to make our financial picture worse, Lori also had some debts
related to her schooling (not much - but for our situation, they
were sizable). So we were NOT very well prepared for marriage
financially! So after our brief and cheap honeymoon, Lori went
out and found a job while I registered for summer school. But
when I couldn't get the courses I needed, I decided to seek
employment myself for the summer. So I got my first job working
at a small airport.

Another of our plans was quickly changed as well! We had
planned to delay having children until after I finished school.
But shortly after we were married, I found that Lori really
wanted a baby now! After really reexamining this issue, I had to
admit that my reasons for delaying children were not right, they
were related to selfishness and common views of our time and
culture, rather than a Biblical viewpoint. So we changed course
and stopped using birth control and desired to have a child now.

Shortly thereafter, Lori was having some problems at work plus
having some morning sickness like symptoms. This caused us to
reexamine the idea of the wife working outside the home. We
decided Lori should quit her job and I should be the one
supporting our family - however low our income might be. We would
just learn to live on less! God was teaching us to step out in
faith when He showed us the path to follow.

Then, a mere two months after our marriage, Lori's father had
a heart attack. So I quit my job and we went to Peoria for a
month to help care for him and the family. When we returned to
Denton in the fall, I was back in school and looking for a new
part-time job. Lori was pregnant, and we were looking for a
cheaper place to live, all things considered. We found a trailer
to rent on a lot a little ways out of town that was dirt-cheap.

I also found a job doing construction cleanup in the
afternoons and we started learning how to live more frugally. To
save money we washed clothes in the bathtub for a while, I walked
rather than drove the few miles to work or to school, and Lori
looked for ways to feed us cheap! So I got plenty of walking
exercise in my new boots Lori gave me for my birthday. The
bedroom in the trailer was very small, so to have more room, we
slept together on a twin bed instead of a double. We had no
insurance, so we were paying month by month to the doctor for the
expected delivery costs.

We continued to be very involved in church during this time,
singing in the choir and each teaching Sunday school classes to
different ages of kids.

Birth of our First
Child: A wonderful child, but a bad birth experience.

One night, around Lori's due date, she discovered the bed was
all wet - her bag of waters had broken prior to real onset of
labor. (By this time we were sleeping on a sofa that opened into
a double bed - the single bed would no longer hold us!). So I
took Lori into the hospital and the doctor was called. At this
point Lori was having only sporadic contractions, so the doctor
decided to induce labor. After about nine hours of this, he
informed us that Lori's delivery was not progressing adequately.
He took X-rays and then informed us that Lori's pelvis was too
small to deliver the baby. He also brought in another doctor to
tell us he agreed. So they told us the baby needed to be
delivered by cesarean section! We had never even thought about
this possibility. The doctor made it sound as though her life was
threatened if we did not soon agree to the cesarean section. So
in our fear and ignorance, we agreed, not fully trusting what we
were hearing from the doctor, but not knowing where else to turn.

There were no major complications from the delivery, but Lori
was in the hospital recovering for about 5 days (normal for
cesareans at that time). We found that the hospital was not very
parent/baby friendly. But at least I was allowed to hold Samuel
once, after I was fully suited up in scrubs. Of course the cost
for a cesarean section was much more than a normal delivery, so
we were left with a substantial debt to pay off. But it was
afterwards that we received the worst news. We would have to have
all of our children by cesarean section and the uterus could only
be expected to hold up for a couple more such operations. So much
for our desire to have a large family!! We were crushed! This was
very hard to take! And Lori was left feeling inadequate, that she
could not have babies normally and was denied the experience of
truly delivering a baby.

COMMENTARY: Babies & Marriage
Difficulties

I suppose that sometimes a new baby added to a
marriage that is experiencing difficulties can make
things worse. But in our case, a baby was a great
blessing to our marriage. A child can be an important
unifying factor between a husband and wife who are
committed to being good parents. A child added to the
motivation to persevere through the hard years and added
to our common purpose as a couple.

Our Second Year of
Marriage: Full time job, move & our 2nd child.

So we began our second year with a little baby boy, living in
a small trailer that seemed impossible to keep cool as the summer
months began, with our money pretty well depleted and more owed
for the delivery. We didn't have room for more than a car bed for
the baby and when we set up the playpen, we blocked the hallway
that led to the bedroom and bath!

At this point my part-time job had come to an end and I
decided to drop out of school for a year and get a full time job
so we could get a better place to live and catch up with
expenses. Throughout this time, my parents were a big help with
giving us clothes and gifts and some monetary gifts as well. I
found a job in a factory building motor homes. At a wage of
$3/hour, we were able to find a rent house which provided much
more room and, with adding a couple of window air conditioners,
could be kept comfortable in the summer.

Just a few months after Samuel was born, Lori became pregnant
again. But after our last experience, we were not going back to
the same doctor! In talking to others we learned of a good (and
less expensive) doctor in a town about 60 miles away. The
hospital there was much cheaper as well. So we went to see this
doctor. He examined Lori and reviewed the history of her first
birth. He told us that there had been no reason for the first
cesarean section. Lori could easily deliver a much larger baby
than Samuel was. The problem had been not waiting for her labor
to start up well on its own. The doctor's efforts to induce labor
merely made the labor immediately hard and tiring without
producing much effect. This doctor indicated a willingness to
give Lori a "trial of labor" to perhaps avoid another
cesarean section, if she was dilated enough when she came in.

But alas, six weeks before the due date and before really
starting labor, Lori again broke her bag of waters. The doctor
tried to delay the onset of labor, but was not successful for
long and with the baby being so early and everything else,
thought another cesarean section was essential. So our son Daniel
was born about six weeks early but was over 4 pounds and only had
to stay in the hospital a couple of weeks.

Also during this year we changed churches and become involved
in establishing a new Bible church in the Denton area. This was a
very hard decision as we had strong ties to so many of the people
at that Methodist church. But we longed for fellowship with other
young Christian couples, which was not available at that church
and were also seeking a church that was a little more like-minded
with us in some ways.

Our Third Year of
Marriage: Return to college, our 3rd child, and a closed door.

After working full time for a year, I decided to return to
college to complete my degree. With having improved our financial
circumstances a bit during the previous year, with my working for
a fast food restaurant many nights and some important financial
assistance from my parents, we were able to make ends meet. Lori
was again pregnant with our third child. Lori had really wanted
girls and having two boys first made things very difficult for
her. But graciously this third child was a girl and it relieved
much of Lori's fear and anxiety in this regard. Of course by this
time people were wondering what was wrong with us, having this
many kids and so close together! And with no money or insurance
either! And other women couldn't imagine being willing to suffer
through three Cesarean sections! Well, we were overjoyed at the
three children we had, each a year apart! They would be very
close to each other with their ages so close. Our concern was the
many more children we had hoped to have, that it now appeared
might be impossible.

It was certainly true that our circumstances were more
difficult financially than for most folks. But this was because
we had married before I was really prepared to support a family.
I think this was foolishness on my part, as was the idea of
having Lori work to support me through school and the idea to
delay children until years after we were married. But you don't
have to be well off to be good parents! Even many of the poor in
this country would often be considered rich in other cultures and
times. More financial means are helpful, but little is truly,
truly required.

As I was finishing college, I was applying to a certain
seminary for admission to study theology. I had changed my course
of study right after marriage to better prepare for seminary and
full time Christian ministry. I was acquainted with other
students from this seminary who were graduating and who would
recommend me. I truly thought the Lord would clear away all
obstacles. After all, hadn't He led me this far?

But then a door was closed in my face - I was rejected. No
particular problem was cited with my references or preparations,
merely that when comparing me to all the other candidates for the
limited number of positions and considering the possible
financial challenges I would face, I was not selected. I could
have applied to other seminaries, but had really felt this was
the precise place the Lord was leading. How could I have been so
mistaken? Now I really felt lost - having majored in history to
better prepare for seminary, my education seemed of little use
now for supporting my growing family. What would I do now? Why
did God close this door?

COMMENTARY:
Financial Preparation for Marriage

As the prophet Jeremiah wrote in Lamentations
3:22-23:

Marrying before you are
financially ready is generally foolish and I would
strongly advise against it. It is better for a young man
to avoid relationships that may lead toward marriage
until he is very nearly prepared to support a family.
Yet, there may be some circumstances where it is the best
alternative when all else is considered.

"It is of the
LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his
compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great
is thy faithfulness." (KJV)
Truly God's mercy and compassion was upon us during these
years, though we were sometimes disappointed and did not
fully understand His purposes.